CERN and the Unspoken Subtelties
I have had the privilege of working at CERN as a technical student for 14 months in an international team of people covering the entire spectrum of the human personality with varied jobs all the way from software developer, extreme programmers, fun supervisors, alcoholics, depressed coworkers, the Portuguese Mafia, HR, UI/UX guy and of Course — scared intern.
I have gathered technical knowledge during my stay there and learnt a lot in several different areas, such as communication as well as Java. The purpose of this report is not to cover the technicalities of the tasks that were accomplished by me during my stay, or the features implemented.
Rather I would like to create a kind of one stop documentation that I wish I had had before arriving at CERN which covers not just getting through CERN, but also the many unspoken subtleties that accompany working here with the 2 big ones being France and Switzerland. It was my first time in Switzerland and France and although I am smitten by the charm of the cross border life (living in France and working in Switzerland), there were many things that I had to learn and I wished quite a lot someone had been there alongside my CERN supervisor to guide me not just through technical problems, but problems in general.
I have divided this report into several Topics and subtopics henceforth. Many of them go straight to the point with clear cut instructions on what to do. Others may be more subjective and give possible recommendations. In some cases, I have annotated my personal incidents to showcase how I learnt. The incidents from top to bottom are not in chronological order, but have been grouped under the most suitable topic. An incident can highly correlate to multiple topics like Switzerland and Trains, or France and Bread — so has been grouped with the most appropriate topic.
Yours truly will henceforth be referred to as ‘the writer’ or ‘the author’. People wanting to know more about the experience and not internal CERN minutia can completely skip the CERN Section.
Ps. This is not a guide on getting into CERN, but rather what to do when you do get in.
Content
- CERN
- UBS (Swiss banking)
- Library
- Restaurant
- Workshops and seminars
- Ordering Stuff
- Clubs
- Bicycle Rental
- Leave Days
- Travel Payment
- Insurance (UNIQUA)
2. Switzerland
- Chocolates
- Watches
- Transport & Trains & Travel
- Geneva
- Victorinox
3. Accommodation
4. France
- French
- Pain (Bread)
5. Revolut
6. Google Maps
CERN
UBS (Yes, the writer has a Swiss bank account, No the writer is not a corrupt politician)
Opening a Swiss bank account was an ethereal experience and also a very easy one. There is a UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) Office right inside CERN next to the Restaurant 1. The bank account is opened within the first week of your arrival and there are 2 options, one with a credit card and one without it. Selecting a credit card costs you 40 CHF per annum and the writer strongly suggests you to opt for the one without a credit card and use Revolut (more on that later).
The male sitting at the UBS reception is very rude, so try and interact with a female colleague if you ever have to.
Library
The writer is an ardent reader and adores book. The writer has read the complete Harry Potter series 7 times and during his stay at CERN has read the Song of Ice and Fire series and many other books ranging from Fiction, Particle Physics, mathematics and of course software development. Visiting the CERN library and perusing the complete catalog has been one of his favorite past times.
The writer highly recommends Clean Code, you must be joking Mr. Feynman and The Code Book by Simon Singh.
Restaurant
CERN has 2 restaurants in the Meyrin site, but given the size of CERN they are very far apart and you will viably use only one of them during your stay at CERN. The author worked right next to Restaurant 1 and hence had plenty of opportunity to gaze at the food with longing and admiration without ever touching it.
The author is classic Hindu lacto-vegetarian which is a concept that the French can never understand. Hence, he was forced to call himself Vegan at all restaurants and parties so that the other person could comprehend (and judge). Vegetarians in France (Europe and America in general as well) are okay with the consumption of egg and many of them fish as well, so introducing himself as a vegetarian puts him in immediate danger of accidentally consuming fish, hence vegan.
The author highly recommends his Indian lacto-vegetarian brothers and sisters to introduce themselves as vegan in all eateries. There is only 1 vegetarian section at CERN and every day the writer used to ask the French serveur behind the counter whether there was egg in the vegetarian section and every day the serveur used to scream this question back to the chef who used to answer ‘qui’ and then the writer walked away sadly. After serval such iterations the serveur straight away answered yes after seeing my face and so his sejours to the restaurant ended.
The writer lives in Saint-Genis Pouilly which is 10 minutes from CERN by bus, and hence used to go home, have lunch and come back to work. In case he ever did need to eat at the restaurant the author used all the available salad dressings, nuts, fruits and vegetables to create a hyper healthy, cheap (comparatively) albeit not that tasty mélange for sustenance and once he was hungry again have a Lindt chocolate bar, hence nullifying all health benefits acquired previously via Salad. (more on that later)
In his first month, when the author was desperately trying to save money (that dream is lost now), he used to consume 1 big bar of Lindt chocolate when there was nothing available in the restaurant, and be very satisfied!
The restaurant is managed by a company called Novae and they maintain an online website where you can have a look at the week’s menu in advance. Do check that out.
Workshops and Seminars
There are several workshops and seminars taking place at CERN all the time. There are minimum 3 talks held every day where speakers from all over the world come to talk on various topics and give amazing presentations. The author was lucky enough to witness a talk by a DevOps engineer from Blizzard on the very first day! The author highly encourages all selected participants to attend at least 1 talk of their liking every month.
Ordering Stuff
The author received the standard CERN setup on joining I.e. 2 monitors, a CPU with dual core i7, 256 gb ssd with 8gb ram and standard Logitech wired mouse and keyboard. The author had never worked on a 2-monitor setup before and was very pleased with it hence naturally never thought of an upgrade.
He never knew that one could place an order for whatever one wished for and depending on need and budget constraints, reasonable requests usually were quickly approved. This was very Aladdin for the author. The author highly recommends all programmers to have 2 monitors of their choice and also try and convince their supervisors for an excellent mouse/keyboard at the least.
CERN personal also receive discount for CERN merchandise and an order for CERN goodies can also be placed at the same system.
Clubs
There are several clubs at CERN; ski club, dance club etc. And the Author is very proud to say that he didn’t join a single one! He is an introvert and also afraid to invest the time and effort to learn skiing, renting equipment and then managing to use the skill when he returns home. (no ski slopes in Delhi and nearest mountains 7+ hours away).
If there is no impending timer inside the reader’s mind where the reader will return home and never see the snowy alps again, the author highly recommends the reader to join the ski club as seats fill out fast.
Bicycle Rental
The author cycled to work for the first 5 months when he was living in Fernery Voltaire, but also purchased a brand-new Cycle for this particular experience. Cycling is fun, time saving as well as affordable — not to mention very healthy. The author has cycled through hail, storm and rain (literally).
But then he moved to Saint-Genis Pouilly where there is actually a bus that takes you from your house to CERN in 10 minutes and the author has been ruined for life now. He never cycled again, except for the one time where he cycled like crazy at 6:00 in the morning to catch his train in Geneva (tldr: he missed the train). The author now goes to CERN via bus, pays for monthly bus passes and also eats nacho chips in excess quantity.
Cycles can be rented free of cost from CERN, but they tend to lean towards the not the best side, so the author recommends that a person can rent them to see if they like cycling to work or not, but if they decide to do so the author highly recommends buying a good bicycle from Decathlon in France for extended usage.
Leave Days
CERN is one of the best employers when it comes to leave days. We have 2.5 paid days of vacation every month + 10 holidays + sick days as well. If you are a student then you also receive 2 examination days per 6 months, so overall if managed properly you would be able to explore Europe and give your exams.
Travel Payments
When you arrive at CERN, you receive a one-time travel allowance based on your home country and please remind your corresponding HR person if they don’t instantiate this themselves.
Insurance (UNIQUA) (I bought 3 sunglasses!)
All CERN personnel are part of the CERN insurance scheme and money is automatically deducted from your salary to make monthly payments towards this insurance. Every member of CERN has equal insurance, but the people earning more at CERN pay more towards the replenishment of this scheme (It’s complicated).
So what are the benefits that you receive? Basically, you receive 80% reimbursement on all appointments and operations in Switzerland and 85% in France. There is a lot of finer detail pertaining to different types of procedures, but something that the author really liked was an 80% discount on all corrective eye-wear including sunglasses.
Switzerland
Chocolates (The next best thing after programming, the very best thing with Programming)
If eating premium swiss chocolates like a maniac and loving them to death is a crime, the author pleads guilty. The author is a lacto-vegetarian hence can’t eat eggs and also many emulsifiers like the E400+ series, hence has to painstakingly search for items. After much deliberation the author has successfully found a company that makes simply the best chocolates in the world without eggs and emulsifiers — Lindt (This is not a paid sponsorship)
The author has tried all flavors and maintains wrappers of all the bars that he has eaten in one of the drawers at his desk. On his last day when he will have to clean his desk. Disposing of off all the wrappers and covers will be painstaking and embarrassing as people discover his controlled substance abuse. The author would recommend certain flavors, but he would like to maintain the length of this document under 100 pages.
Lindt is widely available at supermarkets, including the souvenir shop at CERN. The author discourages the reader to purchase anything from the gift shop at CERN as its ridiculously priced and recommends buying it from a French Supermarket like Carrefour. For my vegan friends out there — Karma is a good vegan chocolate brand.
Watches
The author wished to purchase an authentic swiss watch for his father. The author could never in his life afford a swiss watch. The author assumes the reader can’t either. The author gifted his father 2 fridge magnets. The author recommends the reader to do the same or mix and match it with a cow bell.
Transport + Trains + Travel
Switzerland is one of the only places where I feel one can easily get by without a car, and indeed I have many close friends who do exactly that. Switzerland has many public transport options like Trains, Buses, Trams, the metro (in Lausanne) and even ferries and cruises for the beautiful lakes of Switzerland, but utilizing them in an optimum manner is a very big optimization problem that I intend to crack one day.
Switzerland consists of a common train network spanning it under the name SBB CFF FFS (Swiss Federal Train in German, French and Italian). It also has many different cantonal organizations for transport like the TPG for Geneva and ZVV for Zurich. These are the Public companies that manage the buses, trams etc.
These services are great and the author has used them on a daily basis, but with everything that accompanies Switzerland. It’s excruciatingly expensive. (The author still thinks it’s worth it though) To make it an affordable experience there are several travel cards that can be purchased. The GA (General Abonnement) Travel card — all buses, trains, trams, trolleys, cruises free inside Switzerland. This should set you back about 3200 (adults) and 2600 (students/young adults) CHF per annum. If the reader would like to travel on a daily basis and explore Switzerland properly, the author highly recommends it as it will force the holder to explore and travel and get the worth of this card.
Another good combination for students if the GA travelcard seems too expensive would be to buy the Half fare card (180 CHF) + 725 Card (~390 CHF). With this, travelers will receive a 50% discount on all train tickets and also heavy discounts and reduced prices on bus passes/tram tickets, and they will have GA travel card privileges after 7pm till 5am next morning. Then travelers will only have to purchase one-way tickets for any place on the excellent SBB app.
For transport in France an annual bus pass can be purchased from the TPG office at Gare Cornavin.
Geneva (Where particles and countries collide)
This is the place where all the important offices are — such as TPG for bus passes and SBB for train travel cards etc. The train station Gare Cornavin marks the unofficial tram stop of Geneva and the entrance to the train station where both these offices are located. It is also home to the Lake Geneva/Lac Leman which is ginormous and ends in Montreux (a different city!) It has a huge water jet called the Jet d’eau (Jet of water) which is a must visit attraction. It is also home to the UN.
Victorinox
Victorinox is a very old swiss brand that made the swiss knives. Basically, they have swiss knives, Bags and knives in general. The smaller swiss knives are pretty cool to have as keychains and not that expensive. The bags are ridiculously priced. The cutlery is also expensive, but there is a small region where the quality and price do make sense. The author purchased for himself a small swiss knife from the CERN souvenir ship which makes a good key chain and is too small to be confiscated at airport security. #perfectSize
Accommodation
Searching for a place to stay was much more difficult then bagging an internship at CERN. The application part for CERN took the author about a week and the selection part took me 2 interviews. The rest was just anticipation and tension. To find an apartment and a place to stay the author perused multiped websites, contacted various people via email, various people on the Young@CERN Facebook group, various people on the Geneva Expats group. Posted multiple entries on Facebook, talked to countless others on Airbnb and also ended up changing my flight tickets because of the date collision.
Overall the author acquired quite a many new grey hairs to his already substantial collection because of the apartment fiasco as without one, the author was literally sleeping on the street in a foreign land. In the end the author managed to receive a reply from a French woman who lives in Ferney-Voltaire and teaches in the University of Geneva and also NYU, so lives 7 months in France and 5 months in the US. We exchanged quite a many email and in one particular email she replied “Love from New York”. The author responded with “Greetings from New Delhi”. In the next email — the prospective landlady requested a face to face interview on Skype.
During this duration I also found a Hungarian person on Facebook who had a very interesting name when read in Hindi, so the author contacted him and the Hungarian and Indian shared the apartment in Ferney for 5 months. They later found another (even better) place in saint-Genis Pouilly and a Greek girl also joined our caravanserai.
Overall, what the author would recommend the reader to do to find an accommodation would be to go to the CERN marketplace and the CERN housing website and contact people through that. To find house mates, go through Young@CERN Facebook Group.
France
French
Ahhh, bonjour mes amis. There are several different languages spoken in Switzerland, mainly the trinity; Swiss German, French and Italian. Geneva being on the border of France is part of the French region. It is like the unofficial capital of the French region (Zurich — German and Ticino — Italian) The French are particularly proud of their language and in many cases the author faced difficulty communicating when the other person didn’t know English.
The author has managed to acquire an A2 level of French Certification from CERN and directly take an A2 level course despite knowing nothing in under 6 months. Here is the secret sauce — on your very first day apply for a language course using the online platform (ask your supervisor) The courses are very good and fully paid for by CERN, hence highly recommended. Parallelly as you receive your enrollment dates for the course etc. Also start learning French from Duolingo. All the French that the author knows is because of Duolingo and that 1 two-month course.
The author was once invited to a neighbor’s party and he was very tense, because he had never met them before and none of the persons at that party knew English. Eventually the author became very close friends with them and even stayed with them for a week. (Another story, another time)
Bread (Pain)
This topic is specifically meant for citizens of the sub-continent where bread is a machine made, machine cut plastic wrapped commodity meant for famishing hunger in a quick fell stroke when accompanied with jam, butter, milk or some other item thriving in the reader’s Refrigerator. That is not what bread is in France. It is an article of consumption and relish on its own right and the multitudes of varieties and sizes available will make the reader’s head spin.
The author went out to buy pain (bread in French) from the farmer’s market in Ferney Voltaire that didn’t contain eggs (remember Lacto-vegetarian). He found an excellent cart that was selling handmade egg less authentic French bread, but they were of so many different types, that the author was panic stricken and couldn’t make a decision after being paralyzed with fear. (He ended up buying random breads that were all amazing)
Revolut (I really tried to get some sponsorship 🙁)
Revolut is the most innovative app I have used till date. The ease of convenience that it offers is unparalleled and feels as if someone decided to make a “Bank, but by developers” (without all the managerial hassle). So, what is Revolut? Revolut is an online banking service in which any person domiciled in Europe/America (and many other locations) can use to open a bank account.
This is all managed and done through the app. With this bank account you will receive an IBAN code under your name and BIC (Pretty standard procedure), but the fun part is that you can also order debit cards, create new Virtual Credit cards for shopping. Have different accounts for different currencies like Cryptocurrencies, USD, CHF, EUR etc. I have 4 accounts for different currencies and freely exchange between them. Creating them is free and instantaneous. Transferring money between them is done at the interbank exchange rate, completely free and also instantaneous. You can also do bank transfers for free! Recently Revolut also added the option to purchase stocks without any fees.
Google Maps (Free advertisement)
Google Maps has been the most used app during the author’s time in Europe. It’s such a simple app that we tend to take it for granted and no article needs to be written to explain its functioning. The author has still dedicated a few lines just for a couple of hacks that he has acquired. If the reader is roaming about in Paris or any other city and wishes to know all the attraction he can visit, simply type in Google Maps “Place to visit near me” or even simpler “itinerary”. The author has also frequently used “Vegan near me” and “Vegetarian near me”. Using Google maps constantly can drain battery life fast, hence the author recommends having a portable charger larger than 2000 mAH.
Further Queries
For any further question, feel free to comment or ask them directly on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Anish-Sachdeva-1
